The deal may not happen. But while we wait to find out, let’s unravel some of the threads:

• First, as the WSJ’s Kate Linebaugh and Vipal Monga report, Microsoft is one of the many big U.S. corporations sitting on piles of cash nominally parked at foreign subsidiaries to avoid U.S. taxes. One way that Microsoft could deploy its cash for better returns is by taking minority stakes in other companies.

• As the WSJ’s Dennis Berman reports from the World Economic Forum in Davos, LBO,” as in leveraged buyout, is the word of the day among the assembled global corporate elite. Debt is still cheap, and with yields on U.S. government securities still ultra-low (despite the endless fiscal policy debate in Washington), investors are hungry for higher-yielding corporate debt. The message from the Alps to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Dell CEO Michael Dell: Bring it on!

• A Microsoft investment in Dell would be a significant milepost in the technology industry’s march toward re-integrating the software and hardware sides of the business. Microsoft played a large role in disaggregating software and hardware during the 1980s and 1990s. But that was then. Now Microsoft seems intent on using its $66.6 billion cash pile to get a seat at the hardware table — investing in Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook tablet, for example, and supporting Nokia Corp.’s Windows phone efforts. There are risks for Microsoft. Other big Microsoft customers might suspect that Dell is getting a better deal than they are. But it’s not clear what Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo or other PC makers dependent on Windows can do besides gripe.

A range of finance executives said here Tuesday that they expect the buyout business to boom in 2013. In conversations Blackstone Group’s John Studzinski, Lazard CEO Kenneth Jacobs, and Guggenheim Partners chief investment officer Scott Minerd all expected LBO volume to surge.

The reason: Debt is cheap, companies are trading at reasonable multiples, and bond investors are dying to get their hands on paper with even trace amounts of yield.

Minerd made the most compelling case for a private-equity rebound, saying in an interview that “there is no supply and so much demand.”

“There is so much money chasing yield. Every pension fund has had to scale back their actuarial assumptions.”

Minerd said that a Dell deal — which would put upwards of $10 billion of new debt into the market — would be relatively easy to complete.

Interestingly, Minerd said he also expected a return of more asset-backed securities to enter the market.

While the ABS markets for autos and credit markets are somewhat active, Minerd said that much of the market should be rebuilt from its post-crisis days. The relative volumes of aircraft, franchise financing, and Collateralized Loan Obligation paper remain meek following the 2008 credit crash.

But for Minerd, it’s only a matter of time until these lines return. In turn, he said, the CLO business will beget a reborn market for “leveraged loans” or syndicated bank debt, that will in turn fuel more LBOs.